Page 120 of Lavender Lake

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Just blunt truth.

Because that was Cas.

“The name inked on my hip,” I said. “It doesn’t mean anything.”

“I know it doesn’t mean anything.”

“No, you don’t understand. It doesn’t mean anything because there is no Jean Luc. It was just a name I had tattooed on me because I knew it would drive other men crazy.”

“Jean Luc doesn’t exist?”

“Nope.”

“There was never a Jean Luc?”

“There was never a Jean Luc.”

He let out a laugh and pressed his forehead to mine. “You were put on this earth to drive me insane. I’m convinced of it.”

I wiggled underneath him.

He moved just enough so I could free my legs. And then I wrapped them around him.

“You’re welcome to drive me insane.” I lifted myself up and brushed my lips against his. “In fact, I insist that you do.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

The Ranch

I kicked Cas out of my bed in the middle of the night. He didn’t want to go, but we were tempting fate.

After he’d made me beg, he wouldn’t let me come for an hour. I wasn’t complaining. When he finally slid inside me, I came immediately and it had been one of the most powerful orgasms of my life. I’d bitten his shoulder to keep from screaming.

I was tired, wrung out and ready to fall into deep sleep.

My phone was on silent, but it lit up with a text.

Cas

You kicked me out of your bed and for that you will be punished.

Me

looking forward to it. X

I fell into a light doze and just as I was drifting off to sleep, the conversation I had with the girls floated through my head. Poet had been about to say something when Declan had interrupted.

Suddenly, I was wide awake. I opened my calendar app and scrolled from the previous month to the current one.

My period was late.

Verylate.

I was on birth control so why was my?—

I’d spent the night with Cas in the hotel, and we’d used condoms. Every single time.

Had one of them failed?

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